J U A N G O M E Z

J U A N G O M E Z

F E B R U A R Y 2 – M A R C H 1 12 0 0 6

C U R AT E D B Y V I N C E N T K AT Z

C U E A R T F O U N D AT I O N

We are honored to host this exhibition which has been generously

curated by Vincent Katz. Mr. Katz, a poet, translator, critic and editor, has chosen Juan Gomez, a

Colombian born artist who has lived and worked in New York City for fifteen years. Mr. Katz’s

appreciation of Mr. Gomez’s work demonstrates how the Foundation’s discretionary selection process

allows a natural cross-pollination to occur between different forms of expression.

We appreciate that artists often work tirelessly without thought or concern for exhibition.

CUE is pleased to recognize such commitment by affording this opportunity, thus celebrating the efforts

of artists such as Juan Gomez.

I am interested in the human figure as a structure. I want the people

in the paintings to convey an essence in visual form. I thought of them as symbols, as when you go to see a

dance performance. The expression is in their poses. More than relying on color or atmosphere, I am trying

to put it all on the figures. They communicate a state of mind or a mood through their bodies.

The abstract works come from landscapes. I took note of the colors and worked with simple

lines, keeping most of my attention on how those elements interact with one another on the surface.

Juan Gomez

C U R A T O R ’ SS T A T E M E N T

juan gomez : a painter of differences

Juan Gomez does not sit still. As a man, he left his country and found

a new home, where he can practice his devotion to the art of painting. As a painter, his work has embodied

multiplicities many artists never achieve. The most obvious one, the one a reader of supposed meanings of

artworks, as opposed to an appreciator of art languages, would notice, is the alternation between abstrac-

tion and figuration, but this is only part of the story. More importantly, he has moved from a language that

was spontaneous and squalling to one that involves extreme calculation and equilibrium.

Born in Bogota, Colombia, Gomez grew up in a family that valued the arts. His parents

took him to the Museo del Oro, which holds whatever pre-Columbian gold work was not pillaged by the

Spanish, and his grandfather was an architect who had an active social life. “We had a summer place where

his friends would go, musicians and artists,” Gomez remembers. “I saw painters there. I remember

someone painting in the house, and one of my aunts painted a mural there. My grandfather’s sister makes

pottery. She had a workshop in the city, where we would go, and she would let us play with the materials.”

After a disappointing stint trying to study commercial art at university, Gomez decided to

A R T I S T ’ SS TAT E M E N T

move to the States. “I wanted to get away, leave everything,” he remembers. “I was fed up with the

situation in my country.” Eventually settling in New York, he studied first at the Art Students League and

later at the School of Visual Arts. Among his instructors were Jan Avigkos, Caroll Dunham, Lucio Pozzi and

Barry Schwabsky, but the one who had the greatest impact on Gomez was Haim Stainbach. Stainbach told

Gomez that he was in a medium with tradition and history. ‘“Your options are mapped out for you,’” Gomez

remembers Stainbach saying. “I was painting abstract, and he sent me to look at Soulages, which I didn’t

like at all. He told me to find my peers. For him, painting was a hard road to choose for an artist —

he was very critical of painting and of my doing painting. He never told me he liked my work, but he

challenged me.”

In the late 1990s, Gomez was making erotic drawings, but his paintings of the same time

were abstract. “The drawings were like journals. I was not trying to produce finished work. When I

approached the painting, I remember thinking, ‘These are abstract, because my purpose is very abstract.’ I

remember feeling as though someone had dropped me in the middle of China, a place where no one

understood me, I didn’t understand anyone, so that’s what I could express, without words, without figures.

Those were the only parameters I gave the paintings. I didn’t play with concepts or the history of painting.”

The nudes are a major breakthrough for Gomez. Having worked in increasingly astute

abstract techniques — first in jagged flurries of cross-fire strokes, then in dense fields animated by winding

paths scraped into the paint — Gomez achieved the ultimate synthesis when he brought the nude female

figure into these wavering, linear fields that have a vaguely pre-Colombian air. The figures seem oddly

contemporary. They all depict the same woman, whose only hair is on her head and who is composed of

scrubbed, elongated, parts that fit together, or fall apart, like an erotic construction set.

The imagery seems to speak of breakdowns, which could be the dislocation felt during or

after sex, the dislocation of being in a strange place (she seems in fact to be in no particular place), or it

could be simply the dislocation of existence itself, of trying to be a human being in a world that is

frequently inhumane. These questions of humanism bring to mind a precursor to these abruptly mutated

females, namely the nudes of Picasso. As with the Catalonian master, the female form in Gomez’ paintings

is broken into parts, yet one does not necessarily take this as objectification. The figures in Gomez’

paintings are not made to seem available, as are even the most tortured of Picasso’s figures.

Juan Gomez’ work, whether in oils or in watercolor, clearly signals his desire to place

himself within the tradition of western art. The coloration of the watercolors brings to mind old master

drawings, as does Gomez’ facility with form. Other artists come to mind — Guston for the bluntness of his

figures and Dunham for the playful perversity of his images. One is taken, over all, with the materiality of

Gomez’ work and comes away from it wondering if, despite the titillation of the imagery, the main attraction

is of someone who is really involved with the medium of paint, who is not only willing to work through that,

but who can provide rich textures and shocking contours, for which lovers of technique will be grateful.

Vincent Katz, 2005

blind hymn

The mongers move together in a circle, circulating wares, comparing, noting

But nothing is very different, it is rotten, there is a dull light pushing integers

Across a vast area, in which several indistinct children play tentatively with a

Ball, no dinner bell is rung, no keyboard clatters, just the sound of boat horns

Insistent in the fog that brings every day to a raw finish, a bleating or purpose

Vincent Katz

December 15, 2005

São Paulo

040452, 2004

Oil on linen

14" x 14"

040465, 2004

Oil on linen

36" x 48"

040472, 2004

Oil on canvas

54"x 44"

100376, 2004

Oil on canvas

74" x 66"

070371, 2004

Oil on canvas

60" x 66"

010399, 2004

Oil on canvas

66" x 80"

100381, 2004

Oil on canvas

56" x 68"

100382, 2004

Oil on canvas

58" x 72"

110340, 2004

Oil on canvas

62" x 60"

110341, 2004

Oil on canvas

70" x 68"

110342, 2004

Oil on canvas

70" x 72"

040342, 2004

Watercolor on paper

9" x 12"

040357, 2004

Watercolor on paper

9" x 12"

juan gomez

Juan Gomez was born and raised in Bogota, Colombia in 1970.

He moved to the United States in 1990. Gomez received a BFA in Fine Arts at the School of Visual Arts in

New York City in 1998. He has exhibited his work at Audiello Fine Arts, Art in General, Lombard-Freid

Projects and Momenta Art in New York, NY, The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Ridgefield, CT,

and Turner & Runyon Gallery in Dallas, TX. His exhibitions have been reviewed in Art in America,

The New York Times, ArtNexus and zingmagazine. Gomez currently lives and works in New York City.

vincent katz

Vincent Katz is a poet, translator, art critic, curator, and editor.

Katz writes frequently on contemporary art and has published essays on the work of Francesco Clemente,

Jim Dine, Kiki Smith, Philip Taaffe, and Cy Twombly. He curated the first museum retrospective of the

work of Rudy Burckhardt, in 1998, at the Institute of Modern Art in Valencia, Spain. Katz edited Black

Mountain College: Experiment In Art, published by MIT Press in 2002. His most recent book of poems,

Rapid Departures, was published in São Paulo, Brazil, in 2005. He was awarded a Rome Prize Fellowship

in Literature at the American Academy in Rome for 2001-2002 and the 2005 National Translation Award

from the American Literary Translators Association for his book, The Complete Elegies of Sextus Propertius

(2004, Princeton University Press). He is the editor of the poetry and arts journal VANITAS and of

Libellum books.

B I O S

CUE Art Foundation, a non-profit organization, provides educa-

tional programs for young artists and aspiring art professionals in New York and from around the country.

These programs draw on the unique community of artists, critics, and educators brought together by the

Foundation’s season of exhibitions, public lectures, and its in-gallery studio program. Gallery internships

and stipends afford the next generation of art professionals intimate, working knowledge of the art-making

and exhibition processes. CUE’s 2000 sq. ft. gallery and offices, located in New York’s Chelsea gallery

district, serves as the base for the various educational programs conducted by CUE.

The Foundation’s exhibition season gives unknown or under-recognized artists profes-

sional exposure comparable to that offered by neighboring commercial galleries, without the usual

financial restraints. CUE does not promote a particular school of artistic practice or regional bias; we only

require that exhibiting artists must either not have had a solo exhibition in a commercial venue, or have

received minimal recent public exposure.

CUE’s Advisory Council, an honorary group of artists and leading figures from the arts

education, applied arts, art history, and literary communities, has the responsibility of selecting exhibition

curators. The curators, in turn, nominate artists to exhibit at CUE, and continue to play a role throughout

the exhibition process, helping the artists catalogue their work for exhibition. Both the Advisory Council

and the exhibition curators actively participate in the public lectures and educational programs.

C U E A R TF O U N D AT I O NM I S S I O N

All artwork © Juan Gomez

Catalog designed by Elizabeth Ellis

BOARD OF D IRECTORS

Gregory Amenoff

Theodore S. Berger

Thomas G. Devine

Thomas K.Y. Hsu

Brian D. Starer

ADVISORY COUNCIL

Gregory Amenoff

William Corbett

Meg Cranston

Roy De Carava

Vernon Fisher

Malik Gaines

Deborah Kass

Irving Sandler

GALLERY D IRECTOR

Jeremy Adams

DIRECTOR OF

DEVELOPMENT

Elaine Bowen

GALLERY COORDINATOR

Sandhini Poddar

GALLERY ASS ISTANT

Beatrice Wolert-Weese

511 west 25th street, new york, ny 10001

www.cueartfoundation.org

2 0 0 5 /6